It's not just you. I couldn't imbed them properly, so I just posted the links.

The other guy had a MAJOR background in wrestling. (We became myspace buddies afterwards, lol, so we've chatted about our MA experience.) He wrestled in Junior High and 3 years in HS. His record in freshman year was 16-4; his record in sophomore was 22-2, and his record in junior was 26-1.

He'd only been training for MMA for a few months, though. So I, thankfully, had an advantage standing and on the ground. I just couldn't, for the goddamn life of me, control where the fight would take place.

Is this the smoker you described as a "disastrous showing"? Looks like you made a pretty good showing to me :) Nice take downs and your boxing seemed decently effective. Was this a compromise rule set between sanda-muaythai? What were the weights? It looked like the other guy was significantly bigger.

A few things I want to throw out there:

When moving in and throwing punches, be careful not to break your posture and lean forward as you come in. The main problem we have here is that this is the primary cause of your getting pulled into clinch-knees because you're basically putting yourself in prime position for the other guy to just put his arms on top of you and throw a knee. It's bad to break your posture even without knees for various reasons, but it's especially bad when clinch-knees are involved.

Now, I don't really know much about what you're taught in sanda as far as what to do when someone grabs you in a neck clinch since you're allowed to reach down and grab the legs, but from a muaythai standpoint, as soon as you're grabbed you want to get your hips deep in as close to your opponent's hips as possible, keep your back straight and your head up before making any attempt to body clinch. If you bend over and start reaching for their hips, all they have to do is get their hips back and you've just put yourself in a worse position for taking some knee strikes and getting pulled around by your head. Defending the muaythai clinch is about gluing your body to theirs, particularly if you're significantly shorter like in this fight.

Another thing, which is something I was kind of getting at with the sparring recommendation, is that you back off or move back too much, giving your opponent room to regain their composure. You want to keep constant pressure, always attempting to maneuver them in ways that either set them up for some big strike or into the corner. You don't want your opponent to have the freedom to move around and dictate the fight, unless you're just totally awesome at fighting off the ropes like James Tony.

In any case, it was a good fight and I thought you handled yourself well :)

Nice MMA match. Good job on not losing your composure after that first big takedown. I liked how you methodically worked the body when he held you down in his guard. When he made space to alleviate the pain, you were ready and popped him in the face.

Despite the positional changes on the ground, especially toward the end of the match, you did an excellent job of staying on top.

Is this the smoker you described as a "disastrous showing"? Looks like you made a pretty good showing to me :) Nice take downs and your boxing seemed decently effective. Was this a compromise rule set between sanda-muaythai? What were the weights? It looked like the other guy was significantly bigger.

Yes, this was the smoker. Upon viewing the tapes several dozen times, I realized that from an objective point of view, it was far from disasterous. I was just upset because of my lapses into haymaker-ville, my excessive crotch shots, etc. I'm still not satisfied with how it turned out, but I'm using it as motivation and as a reference for some things that I need to change.

The ruleset was just Muay Thai. If it were Sanda, I think I would've mixed up the takedowns a little more, and used some more painful ones. I was warned once because I did a small lift on a takedown, which I guess is illegal. But other than that, the ref didn't say anything. I'm sure that they were being lenient though, since it was a smoker. If not, I'd have obviously gotten DQ'd for the ball shots.

We fought at 150. I barely cut any weight (3 pounds), while I suspect that he cut a more considerable amount.

Anyways, I've really taken your advice (from the other thread) to heart. I feel like I've had an epiphany about how I should approach a fight. Though I've only managed to get in 1 standup sparring session in this week, I worked appy as much pressure as reasonably possible. Well, except with this one guy. Pretty tall, really good counter fighter. With him I still tried to get off first, but I spent a lot more time trying to get a good angle on him, before engaging with strikes.

I'll keep working on that.

As for the posture, that's something that my coaches yell at me for quite frequently. I've gotten much better about it in sparring, but I haven't gotten over my fear and discomfort about moving closer to the guy's knees. Though I know that, logically, that would reduce the power... It's just counter intuitive. Anyways, in the gym I can consciously MAKE myself do it, but I wasn't able to in the match.

Even though I have more options in Sanda, that doesn't excuse me for lacking one of the fundamentals of defending knees from that position. I'll get to work on that as well.

Thanks for the feedback. It's turned on a light bulb in my head, and I earnestly am doing my best to impliment your advice.

WW, I felt better after watching it, but my gripes remain. Albeit, the bad was less frequent in actuality, than it was in my skewed recollection of the match.

JnP, I don't think I could've freaked out if I wanted to. I was so out of it when the match started. It was like "oh.... I'm on the floor. I should probably get back up... Dammit, on the floor again? Seriously, I need to get this back to my feet... Ohey I'm on top now. Sweeet."

And lol Ranger, a compliment that org always gets is that the chandelier adds a great deal of class to the events. I suppose I agree.